# County Court of Ulster Cty. v. Allen

> Supreme Court of the United States · June 4, 1979 · 442 U.S. 140

URL: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9427597

## Case

- **Full name:** COUNTY COURT OF ULSTER COUNTY, NEW YORK, Et Al. v. ALLEN Et Al.
- **Court:** Supreme Court of the United States
- **Decided:** June 4, 1979
- **Citations:** 442 U.S. 140; 99 S. Ct. 2213; 60 L. Ed. 2d 777; 1979 U.S. LEXIS 124
- **Precedential status:** Published
- **Opinion:** Concurrence by Burger
- **Judges:** Stevens, Burger, White, Blackmun, Rehnquist, Powell, Brennan, Stewart, Marshall
- **Cited by:** 1,710 later opinions in the Frix Law Library

## Citator (automated)

- No negative treatment found by the automated citator. That is not the same as a confirmation that the case is good law; read the citing cases.
- Full citator and citing cases: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9427597

## How later opinions describe it (automated extraction)

- stating, in firearms-possession prosecution, that there was "no more reason to require a permissive statutory presumption to meet a reasonable-doubt standard before it may be permitted to play any part in a trial than there is to require that degree of probative force for othe…
- explaining that automobile presumption is constitutionally applied where it is “rational to infer” that the occupant of a vehicle “was fully aware of the presence of the guns and had both the ability and the intent to exercise dominion and control over the weapons”
- holding that a permis sive inference instruction “affects the application of the beyond a reasonable doubt standard only if, under the facts of the case, there is no rational way the trier [of fact] could make the connection permitted by the inference”
- holding permissive presumption constitutional where there was a “ ‘rational connection’ between the basic facts that the prosecution proved and the ultimate fact presumed, and the latter is ‘more likely than not to flow from’ the former”
- concluding that because the New York Court of Appeals did not invoke a state procedural default rule, but rather rejected petitioner’s argument on the merits, the issue was properly before the federal district court in a habeas petition

## Opinion text

Mr. Chief Justice Burger,
concurring.
I join fully in the Court’s opinion reversing the judgment under review. In the necessarily detailed step-by-step analysis of the legal issues, the central and controlling facts of a case often can become lost. The “underbrush” of finely tuned legal analysis of complex issues tends to bury the facts.
On this record, the jury could readily have reached the same result without benefit of the challenged statutory presumption ; here it reached what was rather obviously a compromise verdict. Even without relying on evidence that two people had been seen placing something in the car trunk shortly before respondents occupied it, and that a machinegun and a package of heroin were soon after found in that trunk, the jury apparently decided that it was enough to hold the passengers to knowledge of the two handguns which were in *168 such plain view that the officer could see them from outside the car. Reasonable jurors could reasonably find that what the officer could see from outside, the passengers within the car could hardly miss seeing. Courts have long held that in the practical business of deciding cases the factfinders, not unlike negotiators, are permitted the luxury of verdicts reached by compromise.

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Source: Frix Law Library, https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9427597. Public record. Not legal advice.